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F982 PUT UP THY SWORD 

Copy 2 






DISCOUESE 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THEODORE PAEKEE'S SOCIETY, 

AT THE 

MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, 

Sunday, March 11, I860. 

By W. H. FURNESS, 

„,«XSTER or THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH IN Pfll... 
ADELPHIA. 



BOSTON: 

PVBLISHED BY R. F. WALLCUT. 21 CORSHILL. 
1860. 






CoraeU Uaiv. 
2 M^h 05 






DISCOUllSE. 



John xviii. 11 — " Put up thy sword into the sheath." 

My friends, I do not believe there ever has been an occasion, 
since the world began, when the sword might have been used 
with greater honor and advantage than that upon which it waa 
thus commanded to be sheathed. If there ever were a person, 
whose life it was worth attempting to preserve, even at the 
cost of any number of common lives, it was he, who, when a 
band of ruffians, with a traitor at their head, had come to seize 
him, thus bade the friend who drew a sword in his defence, to 
put it back again into its sheath. So great was his wisdom, 
so life-giving his presence among men, that it would seem 
that no means should have been suflFered to go unused, of sav- 
ing mankind from so heavy a loss. He was, too, but in the 
blossom of his greatness. When, but a youth as he was, he 
had uttered so many inspired sayings, and, in his personal 
bearing, given assurance of such a man as all history cannot 
parallel, what communications of truth, what a powerful 
influence for good, might not have been looked for from him, 
had his life only been prolonged, had that extraordinary na- 
ture only reached its full maturity ! A life so precious to the 
world, not one sword, but a thousand swords should have 
flashed from their scabbards to protect. 



4 



And the prospect of success in defending that valuable life 
was by no means so desperate at the moment as would appear. 
The popularity of Jesus was great. His enemies did not dare 
to approach him with hostile intent in public and in the day- 
time, so high was he in favor with the masses who crowded 
around him, and were very attentive to hear him, whenever 
he showed himself among them. 

And yet, beyond all computation valuable as his life was, 
and successful as armed resistance to his capture might have 
proved, he forbade a finger to be raised in his defence ; he 
commanded back into the sheath the sword that was drawn 
for him. And now, we may be well assured, that if the sword 
was not to be drawn then, it is never to be drawn. It may 
stay in its sheath, and rust wholly away, or be beaten, without 
any ado, into a pruning-hook. It is not an instrument that 
fits the hand of man, or serves any human purpose. 

What a blessed thing it is for the world, that the sword that 
was drawn on that most critical occasion was put by with no 
stain upon it of mortal strife ; that, even for his own dear life, 
would Jesus give no countenance to any act of violence ! 
Happy is it, I say, for the whole human race, for the complete- 
ness of the grandest ideal that has ever dawned upon our twi- 
light, for the animation of every high hope, that not a drop 
of blood was shed in his behalf by his permission, for now 
stands there imperishably the Divine Fact, that the most ex- 
alted person, and the most abundantly inspired, that ever 
walked the earth, he whose presence here had made for every 
true soul a new heaven and a new earth, chose rather to die 
in the bloom of his years, before he had made himself under- 
stood by a single human being, to all human seeming, under 
the most disastrous circumstances, than to save his great life 
by harming a hair of any man's head ; a Fact, which, setting 
to every word that he uttered the seal of a sovereign sincerity, 
and directly addressing itself to whatever of sensibility there 



5 



is in human nature, to what is magnanimous, is an inexhaust- 
ible fountain of inspiration ; a Fact, which, being a fact, is a 
word spoken to man in the great language of God, and con- 
taining therefore a wealth of wisdom, with which all the truth 
that might be articulated by a human voice in a thousand 
years could not approach to a comparison. So that in that 
one event, this death of Jesus, there is a power, which his 
life, however prolonged, never could have exerted. 

It is not at all strange, that such monstrous theological the- 
ories of the death of Christ have been proposed, representing 
it as an offering of Love, mighty enough to quench the flames 
of an Infinite wrath and atone for the sins of the whole 
world ! Barbarous as is this representation of it, in its logical 
form, its very extravagance bears witness to the profound im- 
pression which the Fact was forcible enough to make. It 
shows, in the wild and unregulated activity to which the 
imagination has been impelled by it, the power of the Fact. 
Whatever makes us feel deeply, always stirs the imagination, 
and generates the most extravagant fancies. So it is, that the 
facts and events which touch us most nearly have given occa- 
sion to the bewildering fictions of Theology. Such dogmas as 
the death of Christ has been interpreted to justify and involve 
never could have obtained acceptance, had not that fact been 
profoundly felt. They have been rendered credible only to 
an imagination so enormously excited that it could not be 
satisfied to accept the fact in its unexaggerated simplicity as a 
natural expression of a human heart, penetrated as heart 
never was before with faith in the competency of Truth and 
the omnipotence of Love. Nevertheless, it is on this very 
account, because it was natural as it was unprecedented, be- 
cause it was in as perfect accord with simple human feelings 
as the flower with the root, because, in all its greatness, it was 
wholly within the sphere of human action and suffering, and 
not for any mysterious significance, such as theologians find 



in it, that it has fixed itself as a great primary fact on the 
heart and history of the world. 

Taken np and cleared from these fantastic interpretations, 
seen as a natural human act, prompted by a soul of unequalled 
generosity, it has, like all facts, which are the words of God, 
infinitely related, and therefore infinitely significant, a world 
of power in it, yet to be explored. Far are we yet from hav- 
ing risen to the height of its sublimity, or penetrated to the 
vigorous vitality of its meaning. 

One of the most obvious lessons which it teaches is this, 
that death, the death of the greatest, of a world-deliverer, 
suddenly and violently occurring on the very threshold of the 
most beneficent activity, in the grey dawning hour of his ca- 
reer, so far from being the utter defeat which it appears, may 
prove a success far more decisive than a life prolonged to the 
uttermost could have achieved. And why ? For this plain 
reason : l^ecause, in giving it to be seen that he, who suffers 
death thus prematurely, as it seems, chooses to endure any 
suffering rather than inflict the least, it makes grandly mani- 
fest the fact, that he is complete in the highest power that we 
know, which is Love, and which wins for him the confidence 
and veneration of mankind for ever, — a conquest which nei- 
ther any mere spoken or written truth, nor a world bristling 
all over with swords and bayonets, has any power to achieve. 

Here, I say, is a truth incontestable, because, in the cruci- 
fixion of Jesus, it exists as a fact; a fact, of which all the high 
sentiments of human nature, with which it is in harmony, are 
so many heavenly witnesses. What truth is there which can 
be more interesting to us now than this? What lesson is 
there which we at this hour more urgently need ? It is the 
most important meaning which the death of Jesus has for us. 

We are here, my friends, having part and place in the 
course of human affairs, at a juncture most momentous in the 
history of the world. Such is our lot. A great hour is com- 



ing, and now is, when that transcendent interest, the central 
soul of all human things, the cause of human liberty' and pro- 
gress, which was once impersonated in Jesus of Nazareth, 
identified with his personal being, is again incarnated, and in 
the scarred and bleeding flesh of the American slave, in the 
wail of whose agony, the same heart-searching voice is again 
articulated, that was heard speaking as man never spoke, 
centuries ago, in Jiidea. It is not the bare foct of his personal 
wrongs and sufferings, though multiplied to millions of in- 
stances, and well demanding, on the mere score of humanity, 
our instant sympathy, that invests the case of the slave with its 
indescribable importance, with its irresistible authority. Bat 
what gives it its commanding claim upon us is the considera- 
tion, that the gross violation of the great gravitating law of 
justice on the person of the slave is an act which our whole 
social power, political, commercial and religious, is delibe- 
rately organized to commit ; that organization, in the origin, 
maintenance and working of which, we, and all that we hold 
dear, are implicated ; that organization, to which the whole 
world of mankind, specially invited by the public and formal 
declaration of this people, have been looking for the fulfilment 
of the great hope of human liberty, and from whom they are 
turning away with fear, indignation and shame, now that they 
are slowly learning to know what au imposture it is. 

As this most unhappy and unrighteous condition of the 
American slave is thus caused, and stands thus related to all 
interests, sacred and secular, he stands out this hour, before 
all mankind, the most public person in the whole world, for 
in his fate, in the treatment which he is thus receiving at the 
hands of this sworn nation of freemen, the destinies of na- 
tions are involved ; and the liberties of Europe stagger and 
halt, bewildered and made weak, as that music of hope which 
went to them over the ocean, waking them to life, is drowned 
in the clanking of chains and the cries of the oppressed. 



I am not indulging in mere figures of speech. I beseech 
you, do not for a moment imagine it. I am only trying to 
give an adequate statement to a truth, which it is of unspeak- 
able moment that we should every soul of us appreciate. And 
I repeat, our oppressed brother, weak, degraded and mal- 
treated as he is, and because he is all these, and we do all 
conspire to keep him so, upholding our whole social order 
upon his wrongs as its chief corner-stone, — he is the special 
representative person of the nation and the world. He repre- 
sents the dearest human interests. And in like manner, pre- 
cisely as the fate of Jesus of Nazareth once changed the con- 
dition of mankind, so the whole course of human history now 
waits upon the fortunes of the slave. 

Dear friends, as every one who has eyes to see may now 
see, it was not only to a benevolent instinct, blind, yet di- 
vine, but to the clearest-sighted wisdom, that Jesus gave 
utterance, when, in the most solemn manner possible, he rep- 
resented the least of men as standing in his stead, and identi- 
fied sympathy for the lowest with the homage due to the 
highest. Yes, just as Jesus, by virtue of his matchless truth, 
stood to his country and to the whole world, baptising men 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire, with his fan in his hand, 
separating the chaif from the wheat, and thoroughly sweeping 
his floor, so now his wretched brother, the slave, stands to 
this country and to the age, by virtue of the mighty wrongs 
which we all conspire to inflict upon him, and which, for the 
very reason that he has no power to utter them, clothe him 
only the more fully with the same divine authority that in- 
vested the words of Christ, to search and try the souls of 
men. Is not the Fan which was once held in the strong grasp 
of the Lord Jesus waving mightily now in the manacled 
hand of the slave over the whole land, winnowing the nation 
as with a fiery blast, coming straight out of heaven, bearing 
down all human efibrts to lull the divine storm ? What 



9 

precious graiu it is separating to sow the world with, or to 
gather into the garners of heaven ! And the air is thick 
with the chaff, political and ecclesiastical, which it is whirling 
away, and which a little while ago lay so quietly and in huge 
heaps, undistinguishable from the finest of the wheat. 

Since the slave occupies this critical position, since such 
vast interests are involved in his rights and wrongs, and 
since every event that occurs tends to fix our attention upon 
him, to the exclusion of every thing else, the question is forced 
upon us. What are we to do about him, — we, especially, of 
the North ? 

To this vital inquiry, there are still not a few who are 
quick and confident to reply, " We are to let him alone ; we 
are to do nothing." But, unhappily, or happily, that is impos- 
sible, absolutely impossible. I am free to confess, that for 
myself, there is not any thing that I would be so glad to do in 
regard to this trying subject as just that : Nothing. But 
that is the thing which, of all things, I repeat, cannot possibly 
be done. What ! cannot a man fold his arms, and hold his 
tongue, and shut his eyes, and turn his back, and stand per- 
fectly still? Hardly, if he have a spark of humanity in him. 
It is about as easy as to hold one's breath for any length of 
time, or to stop one's pulse. And yet, I believe there have 
been men who were able to do this last ; men who had the 
power of voluntarily suspending all perceptible signs of ani- 
mation for an extraordinary length of time, — some months ; 
I think I have read of such cases, So, also, there are thoso, 
not a few, men too, that labor apparently under no organic 
defect in regard to a heart, who seem to possess a like power 
of .suspending all signs of moral life, of suppressing every 
pulse of human sympathy, and remainin wholly unmoved in 
the presence of the most flagrant oppression. How they do 
it I do not know. But they do it, and become as dead men 
to the claims of humanity. I think there must be some black 
1* 



10 



Art practised, some charm employed, more potent than ether 
or chloroform, made out of cotton or of gold. Gold has occult 
powers of mighty energy. We have the high authority of 
Faraday for the homoeopathic faith, that a minute quantity 
of this metal will give to five hundred thousand times its 
weight of water a bright ruby color, and man is n:iade of wa- 
ter chiefly, they say. So there is no knowing what organic 
changes gold may not accomplish in man and account for. 

But be this as it may, let it be that at this time, when 
oppression numbers its victims by millions steadily increas- 
ing, and is demanding to be recognized and protected as a 
God-ordained institution, and every whisper against it to be 
hushed, — let it be, that it is perfectly easy to stand still, and 
hold one's peace, and ignore the whole thing. But this, 
friends, this is not doing nothing. On the contrary, this stand- 
ing still and keeping silent, — why, it is equivalent to doing 
every thing, every thing to favor the great iniquity. I do not 
know what more effectual thing any man can do to strengthen 
and extend the power and misery of wrong than just this : to 
keep his eyes, ears and mouth shut. It is the very thing; it is 
all that the upholders of the wrong ask of us. It is all, at 
least, that they presumed to ask of us a little while ago, that 
we would just keep quiet, which modest request there were a 
great many people only too willing to comply with, if only 
the Slave Power would itself have kept quiet. But as that 
could not be, as, by the very necessity of its nature, it had to 
commit new and more flagrant outrages, silence and quiet 
have grown more and more difiicult. So that now, naturally 
enough, something more than the negative countenance of 
silence is demanded ; and the menace is that, if we dare to 
open our lips, except to admit the constitutional right and 
Christian duty of man to hold his fellow-man as property, we 
do it at the risk of being mobbed and outlawed. For this 
monstrous and Heaven-defying despotism, and for the out- 



11 



rageous lengths to which it is now pushing its demands, we 
are indebted to the do-nothing method of dealing with it. It 
has all come from that, from letting the evil thing alone, — 
alone to grow, of course, unchecked. It is the standing still 
and keeping silent, which this nation practised so thoroughly 
for half a century that we actually forgot that there was a 
• human being on our soil that was not free, when there were 
actually millions in that miserable plight, — it was this clos- 
ing of the eyes to slavery, until we lost sight of its existence, 
that has enabled oppression to extend wide its branches and 
Strike deep its roots, and diffuse the death-distilling influence 
which has paralyzed the conscience and the Religion of the 
land, and so deadened our ordinary human sensibility that we 
can hardly distinguish bitter from sweet. 

No, my friends, it is not possible in this matter to do 
nothing. God help us ! we cannot be neutral. What passes 
for neutrality is only another name for downright interference 
and meddling with human rights, with the rights of property, 
and especially with that right of property which every man 
has to own himself, and which is the foundation of all rights 
of property. It is the neutrality which has been pretended, 
that has fed oppression with victims by the hecatomb, and 
has generated and deepened the black clouds that threaten to 
hide for ever the beacon light of Hope which has been kindled 
on this continent. As we cannot be neutral, as we must do 
something, what are we to do ? 

This question, which has been steadily coming home to us 
now for some years with increasing weight, in one shape or 
another, has recently been pressed upon us with sudden and 
great urgency, by events, which, fresh as they are in all 
minds, and still profoundly agitating the nation at large, there 
is no need that I should detail any more particularly than to 
say that they compose the incidents of an attempt to answer 
the great question in a certain way, namely, by resorting to 



12 



a certain degree of physical force, in order to the deliverance 
of the oppressed ; an attempt, the aim of which, as its leader 
declared, and upon his word all who knew him rely, was, 
with the utmost humanity possible, with a careful avoidance 
of all personal injury to the master, save in self-defence, to 
provide a way of escape for the slave, and to arm him against 
recapture on his way to the mountains or to a free soil be- 
yond the borders of our slave soil; an attempt, undertaken 
not without the hope that in Virginia, as in Missouri, it might 
be carried out " without the snapping of a gun." Such was 
the object of John Brown, a man of such impressive truthful- 
ness and dignity of character, that the light of his high per- 
sonal qualities broke at once through the blinding mists of 
rage and terror that gathered round him upon the very 
threshold of his enterprise, and commanded the respect and 
admiration of those who overpowered him and dragged him 
to the scaffold. 

Considered, therefore, in its intention, this enterprise was 
not an express and formal attempt to solve our great problem 
by asserting the right of insurrection. It was not designed 
to stir up the slaves to a murderous assault upon the persons 
and families of their masters. So that it may be affirmed 
that no man in the North, no Anti-Slavery man certainly, 
not even John Brown himself, ever contemplated instigating 
the oppressed to rise upon their oppressors and put them to 
the sword. All that he sought was to assist the slaves to es- 
cape from the house of bondage, and to provide them with 
arras to defend themselves from being re-taken. 

I do not imagine there is a man among us so destitute of 
common sense and humanity as to think of inciting the slaves 
to acts of vengeance and murder. No friend of the black 
race can regard such a thought with any feeling but of horror. 
Why, the first intimation of the existence of such a purpose 
would be a signal for the instant outbreak of a war of exter- 



13 



mination upon that unhappy people. It has been thought, 
that it would help certain party and political purposes to 
charge certain persons at the North with this bloody design. 
But of those who made this charge, I do not suppose that any 
believed it, but those who were bereft of their senses by rage 
and terror. It is not in the people of the North to enter- 
tain any such murderous idea. Indeed, so utterly incapable 
do I hold them to be of any such savage intent, that I can 
hardly bear to seem to be defending them against the charge. 
But it is needful to say what I am saying: we must expect 
this charge to be made, we must reconcile ourselves to the 
humiliation of uttering our protest against being accused of 
these bloody designs, so long as we avow, as the great mass 
of the people all over the North, all over the South, yes, and 
all over the world, do avow, the lawfulness, under any circum- 
stances, of resorting to brute force, of drawing the death-deal- 
ing sword for God and for man. So long as we maintain the 
right to shoot and stab to right any wrong, we are fairly open 
to the suspicion of being ready and willing to shoot and stab 
to any extent; not only because we are extremely liable to 
confound our passions with our principles, and to persuade 
ourselves that we are striking for God and for the Bight, 
when we are only gratifying our anger or our revenge, but 
because, the right to use violence in any case being maintained, 
as a principle, we do virtually stand upon the ground of its 
lawfulness in all cases. It is a principle upon which no re- 
striction can be put, for it asserts aggression to be the dictate 
of self-defence, and uses not merely a i-hield, but a sword, 
and a sword not merely to ward oflP, but to strike. The dis- 
tinction is made, I know, between the offensive and the de- 
fensive. The line that divides these two seems to be very 
easily and broadly drawn, but it is very sensitive, and sways 
to and fro with the slightest breath of human emotion, and 
may at any moment be obliterated by the surges of passion. 



14 



What act of war is there so bloody and inhuman that it 
has not been justified at the moment, and afterwards, upon the 
ground that it was rendered necessary for the self-protection 
of somebody ? 

So long, therefore, as we assert the right to use the sword 
upon any occasion, we lay ourselves open to the charge of 
being ready to use it needlessly, because we are, in fact, liable 
to use it so ; because, when we are aggressive in defence, it is 
impossible to distinguish aggression from defence. Why, the 
bare physical exertion required to render a blow efi'ective 
creates a heat in the blood, and the hot blood goes to the 
brain, and when the mind is heated, the ordinary effect of 
heat follows. The thoughts and images that rise in the mind 
are dilated ; trifles are magnified into grave offences ; the 
wild suggestions of an inflamed fancy are taken for self- 
evident facts, and then all the curbs of Reason and Humanity 
are consumed in the heat, and the passions rush all abroad to 
the work of blood and rapine, like so many demons let loose 
from the abodes of darkness. 

So plainly true is all this, that while I heartily honor John 
Brown for his generous purpose and for his heroic courage, 
while I freely allow that wherein he was wrong he had this 
excuse, that he was justified by the public sentiment of the 
world, which recognizes the sword as the lawful instrument of 
Justice and Liberty, I nevertheless see, that in resorting to 
force, in drawing the sword for the slave, he was wrong, and 
that the means which he employed tended to hurt the cause 
which it was in his great heart to serve. With all his care 
so to organize the enterprise which he undertook in behalf of 
the slave as to keep it strictly within the bounds of humanity 
and self-defence which he resolved to observe, he was not 
able, even on the threshold of his attempt, to prevent a shed- 
ding of blood, a sacrifice of life, which his purpose and his 
method did not contemplate, and which aroused against him 



15 



and his little company a ferocity so savage that it wreaked 
its fury even upon the dead bodies of those of his friends who 
fell at Harper's Ferry. Wise and self-possessed as he was, 
and with all his experience of the barbarity of the Slave 
Power, and because, as I believe, he was full of the blessed 
idea of restoring to the oppressed the sacred rights of which 
they are robbed, he appears to have lost all foresight of 
the cruelty and bloodshed which would inevitably flow from 
the frenzy of fear and wrath that the first flash of his drawn 
sword would certainly kindle in those against whom it was 
drawn. He did not take into account the undeviating law, 
that violence produces violence, and that the force, which he 
intended to employ very guardedly and under the steady re- 
straint of a watchful humanity, would look, in the eyes of 
those against whom it was directed, like nothing but what it 
was, pure, untempered, brute force, and so would be sure 
to arouse a force in them which would regard no restraints. 
Had he been successful in his first enterprise, had every thing 
gone as he intended, and a refuge been obtained in the moun- 
tains, it would have told fearfully upon the black race, whose 
blood all over the South would, I believe, have run like 
water, and whose chains would instantly have been trebled in 
weight, while at the North, all who sympathise with them 
would have been the objects of a far fiercer persecution than 
they have yet dreamed of. I know that the slave has friends 
here, whose fidelity no persecution, however violent, can 
shake, but only confirm. I believe, too, that they are pre- 
pared for every trial that an uncompromising adherence to 
the Right may involve. Only the more earnestly to be de- 
sired is it, that no unnecessary occasion should be given to 
the spirit of persecution, that no needless obstacles should 
be thrown in the way of the great and holy cause of Aboli- 
tion. It is not worth while that the difficulties with which it 
has to contend should be aggravated by the employment of 



16 



methods of serving it, wlilcli, to say the least, are question- 
able, and which many of its most faithful friends consider 
positively and upon principle wrong. 

That such consequences as I have mentioned would have 
resulted from the success of John Brown's attempt, we may 
see plainly enough from w^iat has actually followed upon its 
failure. In some of the Slave States, it is seriously proposed, 
as you know, cither to drive out of them all free persons of 
African blood, or reduce them to the abject condition of slaves. 
In Kentucky, a company of white people, resembling the 
primitive Christians in their blameless and devout lives, have 
been driven into exile, for no reason but because they had 
pity upon the enslaved and held oppresoion to be sinful 
before God. In the city where I dwell, persons, from whose 
education and position better things were to be expected, have 
publicly counselled the violent suppression of the most pre- 
cious principle of our American institutions. Free Speech ; 
counsel which only the commendable firmness of our civil 
authorities prevented from being carried into eflfect with blood 
and fire. And all over the South, every Northern stranger is 
narrowly watched, and many have been brutally treated and 
driven away, and a reign of terror inaugurated, under which 
the bloody law of the Suspect, without needing to be enacted, 
is going into full operation. 

These things are the inevitable consequences of the intrusion 
of the drawn sword into the great conflict, and they show 
what far more bloody results would have come, not to the 
free white people of the South, not to the slaveholders, but 
to the slaves and their well-wishers, had not the sword that 
was drawn been instantly driven back into the sheath. 

The recent attempt, therefore, which is stirring the heart 
of the country, " educating the nation," as Wendell Phillips 
loves to say, teaches us very pointedly what we are not to do 
for our enslaved brother. Most solemnly does it repeat the 



17 

command of Jesus to his rash and ardent friend : " Put up 

THY SWORD INTO THE SHEATH." 

The sword can only wound and kill the body, and upon 
the mind it can have no effect, but to madden it with rage or 
drive it wild with terror ; thus, so far from convincing the 
understanding, or strengthening the sense of Justice, or breath- 
ing into men the spirit of repentance and humanity, closing 
both heart and understanding against the Truth. Every body 
knows this. Every body knows that a blow is not an argu- 
ment, that stabbing and shooting prove nothing, that phys- 
ical force displaces the greater force of Truth. 

The force of Truth, on the other hand, living in a man, 
sounding in his voice, beaming from his countenance, ex- 
pressed in his whole person, — that it is that goes to the 
heart, straight to the heart. No cannon ball goes swifter. 
The shields which the advocates of wrong hide behind to es- 
cape it, the fortifications which they throw up to keep it out, 
and all the extreme measures to which they have recourse to 
defend themselves against it, the depths of absxirdity into 
which they plunge to get out of its range, — do they not all 
betray the fact that the truth is felt and feared? AVhen, 
some thirty years ago, in the city of Boston, a solitary voice 
was uplifted, publishing the truth, that to hold a man as a 
slaA^e is a sin before God, and, as such, must be forsaken 
without a moment's delay, and the State of Georgia at the 
other end of the country set a price of five thousand dollars 
on the head of him who dared to publish this truth, the 
proof was decisive that the great wrong was hit in the 
heart. 

The force of Truth is indeed so great, that when men will 
not, through its arguments and persuasions, forsake their 
falsehoods, it compels them to act out the evil that is in them, 
and which refuses to yield to any gentler treatment, and so 
they get a taste of its bitter quality in the ridicule and shame 



18 



which they incur, and the shattering collision with facts into 
which they rush. This way which Truth takes with the re- 
fractory is a violent, and oftentimes a bloody process, for 
the devils, which she thus arouses and dislodges, rend and 
tear their victims, and make them mischievous to others as 
well as to themselves. Nevertheless, the world is greatly 
obliged to the Truth, whenever she renders it this valuable 
service. But because her faithful words are often followed 
by riot and bloodshed, as quickly as if they were so many 
pistol shots, there are not a few who see no difference between 
the sword of steel and the sword of Truth, and hold it just 
as disorderly to employ the one as the other ; and for their 
part, they protest they would as lief be struck by the hand as 
by the tongue. Perhaps they would, so far as the mere pain 
is concerned. But there is all the difference in the world 
between the wounds inflicted on the body by muskets and 
sabres, and the inflammation of the mind caused by the word- 
winged shafts of Truth. The wounds of the body are posi- 
tive injuries, disfiguring, and disabling perhaps to the ex- 
tent of destroying life, and who shall tell the worth of that ? 
The wounds made by the Sword of the Spirit, when that 
sword is wielded in love, without heat or malice, however 
much they may irritate, and notwithstanding the violent 
spasms they may occasion, tend to heal and make sound the 
whole man. The fits of profane wrath into which men are 
thrown by the Truth, are often signs of quite an advanced 
8tate of grace. Paul set out from Jerusalem, breathing 
threateuings and slaughter against the Christians, but before 
he reached Damascus, he was a Christian himself, of the first 
order. 

Therefore, because the Truth is so great, let the sword be 
put back into the sheath. We need something stronger than 
that, and Truth is as much more effectual than any brute 



19 



force, as the last most deadly invention of modern military 
science is than the war-club of a New Zealander. 

As I see the immeasurable superiority of intellectual and 
moral power over all the revolvers and rifles and artillery 
that ever have been or ever will be devised, as I hold this 
superiority of the power of the mind over the force of the 
body to be as true as the shining of the sun there in the heav- 
ens, I believe that unless men lose their senses, and are be- 
reft of the commonest faculties of discernment, they must, 
sooner or later, recognise this truth, recognise it, too, so clear- 
ly, that they will be at a loss to conceive how men, laying 
claim to any civilization, could ever have been so absurd as 
to undertake to fight against evil with physical force, when 
the invincible Sword of the Spirit is always within reach. If 
men are for ever incapable of apprehending this truth, how 
will it help the matter to hack them in pieces with the sword, 
or blow them into atoms with gunpowder ? 

But another reason why I confidently believe that men will 
come by and by to see this very valuable truth as clearly as 
they see the light of day is, that to wield the Sword of the 
Spirit requires that quality, in its highest degree, than which 
there is nothing that so ftisciuates us all, men and women, 
weak and strong, wise and simple : Personal Courage. It is 
this one quality, and only this, that reconciles mankind, age 
after age, to the brutal absurdity of war. Because the use 
of the sword indicates personal courage, we acquiesce in this 
irrational method of serving the cause of Liberty and Right, 
nay, we magnify the work of violence and blood, as the most 
glorious of all human achievements, and warriors are the 
world's heroes and saints. But there is a far higher courage, 
there is a far more daring spirit than his who knows how to 
fight. There is a braver than he. It is the man who knows 
how to die, who, never thinking to insult the Truth by employ- 
ing ill her behalf any weapons but her own, speaks her message 



20 



in love, and without fear, prepared to suffer violence, but never 
to commit it; who, in a word, is so brave that he holds it cow- 
ardly to draw the sword. Is not such a spirit possible ? The 
profession of non-resistance to force by force, I am aware, 
looks suspicious, — the pretext, it may be, of the timid, of those 
who dare not confront a drawn sword, or a loaded revolver. 
If it be only this, it deserves and must inspire only contempt. 
But, rare as it is, — the exalted valor of which I speak, — it 
is not impossible. Men and women, under the inspiration of 
conscious right, have manifested it, over and over again. 
The late Isaac Hopper gave us some relish of its quality, 
who, when a kidnapper levelled a pistol at his heart, threat- 
ening to shoot him if he advanced a step, quietly replied to 
the threat : " I am ashamed of thee, — thee 's too old, — thee 
ought to know better," and moved on. Captivated, as we all 
are, by exhibitions of personal daring, this highest form of 
courage, the valor that flings away the sword, must take the 
heart of the world, and triumphing over the imagination, en- 
listing all the fine arts in its service, Painting, Poetry and 
Music, will level every stronghold of iniquity, though it bris- 
tle all around with artillery loaded to the mouth. 

It is because of this grander courage, because there is a 
surer method for the abolition of wrong than the method of 
the sword, I reply to the question, — What are we to do for 
the slave ? — we are not to draw the sword, or when it has 
been rashly and unwisely drawn, as it was by Peter in the 
Garden, as it has been by John Brown at Harper's Ferry, it 
must be put back into the sheath, to remain there for ever, 
unstained by a single drop of human blood. 

It is true, as your minister, faithful and well-beloved, has 
said, all the great charters of Humanity have been written 
in blood ; and therefore he justifies the shedding of blood. 
It is because they were written in blood, blood shed by their 
champions, that they have so often proved to be a dead letter ; 



21 

because they have sanctioned the bloody arbitrament of the 
sword, the dear cause of man's deliverance has to be fought 
for over and over again. Revolutions effected by force 
always end, sooner or later, in reestablishing the tyranny 
they undertake to overthrow. And our boasted American 
Kevolution is no exception to this truth, but an impressive 
instance of it. 

It is high time that the savage attempt to convert men by 
killing them, by wholesale murder, should come to a full end. 
The time and the country in which we live, with all the up- 
roar with which they are ringing, furnish a grand opportunity 
to contend for the Truth with the Truth, in the accorded 
right of Free Speech, of which, struck down, as it now is, at 
the South, and threatened at the North, I still have faith 
that the people of the Free States will not consent to be de- 
prived. Of this right we cannot indeed be divested, without 
our consent, although we may be forced to pay a price for 
the exercise of it. But there is no price, not even life itself, 
that is not cheap in comparison with this more than royal 
prerogative. Only the grander will be the opportut>ity of 
serving Truth and Freedom by suffering for them, by show- 
ing how highly they are to be prized, allowing no blood to be 
shed, no lives to be sacrificed for them, but our own. They 
are worth that sacrifice, a thousand times over. What ! 
is it held sweet and honorable to a proverb to die for one's 
native land, and shall it not be far sweeter and more honora- 
ble to die for that which is the renown of all lands, the de- 
sire of a 1 nations ? To be willing to cease from life, rather 
than take the life of the meanest human being that breathes — 
this is the highe t service to the God of Truth and Love 
A\hich any man can render. This is God-like. This is being 
made perfect in love. Greater love hath no man than to lay 
down one's life for his friends and his foes. 

Thus serving God and man by a self-surrender which knoTS 



22 



no reserve or Btipulation, we shall not, by any means, relin- 
quish, we shall assert, and most faithfully exercise, the first sa- 
cred Right of Nature, the Right of Self-defence; only we 
do not consider the faint breath of our nostrils, the frail lii'e of 
the body, subject to many pains, lasting only a few uncertain 
years, — we do not mistake this shadow for our vory self, to 
defend which we are to cut and thrust and shoot in all di- 
rections, and cause human blood to flow in torrents. Rut the 
life that we are to guard from every wound and every stain 
is the life of the sacred. Heaven-descended mind. That is 
our dear self. To defend that, to preserve it free and pure, 
free from the bondage of fear, pure from every injurious 
thought, we must be ready, at any moment, to let the I'fe of 
the body go, with perfect composure, having, in the conscious- 
ness of a deeper life than that, an intuitive conviction that 
thus to lose one's life is to find it for ever. It was when the 
sword of steel was taken out of the hand of John Brown, as 
he himself said, and he was left with only the Sword of the 
Spirit, that he had a new experience of a higher power than 
the force of arms. When he was a prisoner, and doomed to 
death, when he went to the scaffold, with the serenity of the 
fine country around him in his heart as well as in his eye, 
then it was that he was robed and crowned with victory. 
Then shone forth the heroic quality of the man, brighter 
than any diadem. Then friend and foe were alike touched 
with his nobleness, and a right loyal thrill of admiring sym- 
pathy went through the world. 

One word, and I will detain you no' longer. I have en- 
deavored, my friends, to give some expression to my deep 
conviction of a vital principle of the Gospel of Peace and 
Truth, a principle which, so long as it continues an abstrac- 
■ tion, the despotic wrongs under which the world writhes may 
be subverted, but only to reappear, in forms just as terrible. 
I believe in the truth and indescribable worth of this princi- 



23 

pie. I have not had the slightest hesitation, — I have been 
glad to utter my faith freely here. For how else, but by a 
difference, could I better testify the honor and the love in 
■which I hold the devoted minister of God and brother of 
Christ, who still ministers here, though absent, whose heart 
is a live coal upon the altar of Humanity, a shining and a 
burning light, and for whose health and welfare unuttered 
prayers are constantly ascending far and wide ? May Heaven 
bless him and you, and in times like the present, and in such 
times as may come, we know not at what hour, may we one 
and all be faithful to our light ! 



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